From Republican House to Retirement Home

Mike Johnson is watching dozens of his colleagues shuffle off toward the exits.

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

Turkey dump

Serving in the House of Representatives just isn’t much fun anymore. It’s gotten so not fun that lawmakers have started retiring at a record pace to seek their fun elsewhere. In the House, forty members across both parties are not seeking re-election. In the Senate, ten are ditching D.C. (and two more might also leave if they win their gubernatorial races midterm).

Part of the problem is that Congress has become more and more of a sideshow to the main event at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a situation that has sapped morale among GOP lawmakers and encouraged many of them to look for the exits. Things have gotten so bad that some Republicans are speculating that the House might even change hands before the end of the session due to a flood of retirements. An unnamed senior House GOP lawmaker told Punchbowl:

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.

“More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

But don’t put too much stock in the prospect of the House changing hands before voters next go to the polls. The idea that so many Republicans would depart early that they would give Democrats the majority is too silly for even Aaron Sorkin to dream up for one of his sentimental homages to an idealized American politics wherein politicians are not self-interested or incompetent.¹

The only time the House majority has ever changed hands in this way occurred nearly a century ago. The 1930 election gave Republicans a majority with margins about as slim as today’s. By a little more than a year later, the Grim Reaper’s lobbying efforts resulted in a change in the balance of power: Fourteen elected members died in that time, and through an agreement with third-party lawmakers (which no longer exist in the House), Democrats managed to take back the House by the end of the Congress.

If you recall the 118th Congress, which ranked among the least productive and most chaotic in history, Rep. Ken Buck’s (R-Colo.) sudden resignation sparked a similar panic. Not long after Buck, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) departed for a private sector career. But not nearly enough Republicans followed those two out the door to threaten the party’s majority.

Things have, admittedly, gotten even worse since then. The pain of coming to Washington with a sense of mission, only to be subjected to repeated censure votes and strong-arming from the White House, is taking a toll on the House—and providing lawmakers with an easy excuse to seek employment elsewhere.

What stands out about this trend is that age doesn’t appear to be the main motivating factor. That’s a major distinction between the two parties.

Consider this: After President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign crashed out with only months to go in the 2024 cycle, Democrats began worrying about their graying caucus. Their concerns were exacerbated by the sudden death of Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas) just two months into his first term at 70.

But if you look at the age spread of each party’s departing lawmakers, outgoing Republican lawmakers tend to be retiring in what should be the prime years of their political careers, while Democrats are hanging it up closer to the official retirement age of 65.

Among the twenty-three retiring Republicans, the average age is around 54.5 years old. Among the seventeen departing Democrats, the average age is a hair below 63.

The ideological breakdown of Republicans leaving the House is also more stark.

Seven retiring Republicans are members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. An additional two (Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and David Schweikert) are former members.

In the thick middle of the political horseshoe, six retiring members (including both Republicans and Democrats) belong to the Problem Solvers Caucus, the bipartisan working group that’s lost its purpose in today’s hyperpolarized political environment.

Still, when I reached out to a handful of Capitol Hill staffers, none them said they believed the House would change hands. One Democrat said, “Inshallah.” They meant it as a joke, but as the example of 1930 suggests, perhaps it’s true that only God alone could orchestrate a mid-Congress change of the majority.

Albatross

On the topic of making life miserable for House Republicans, the president does not appear to care all that much about what they think or how they feel.

Take a look at the sequence of recent events on health policy:

• House Republicans refused to negotiate with Democrats on extending enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, creating a crisis of affordability for millions of Americans whose health care costs are now set to rise dramatically at the end of the year.

• In response to this problem, the White House leaked that it was preparing its own health plan, which includes an extension of the ACA subsidies with limits on who would qualify.

• House Republicans were caught off guard, as the administration apparently never consulted them about its proposal.

• Those same Republicans expressed anger, since one of their only sources of unity on policy for over fifteen years has been opposition to Obamacare.

• The White House withdrew its proposal before the planned rollout.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has let Trump do much of the driving during the 119th Congress, and he has done better through this arrangement than his more independent-minded predecessors did. But he had to draw the line on health care, which is arguably the Republican party’s single worst policy area—both in terms of polling and their ability to actually do something about the problems they identify.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The message from Johnson, in a phone call with administration officials, came as President Trump’s advisers were drafting a healthcare plan that extended the subsidies for two years.

The warning underscores the hurdles facing any deal in coming weeks. Lawmakers have a mid-December deadline for healthcare votes promised as a condition for Democrats voting to end the government shutdown earlier this month. The enhanced subsidies expire at the end of the year, affecting more than 20 million people who benefit from the tax credits.

Many Republicans objected to the taxpayer-funded subsidies continuing to go toward funding healthcare plans that cover abortions, a red line for many GOP lawmakers, said people familiar with the objections.

As a result, the GOP remains in its fraught position, with young Republicans eager to give health care reform another whack while seasoned conservatives stand off to the side smoking thin black cigarettes and reflecting on the political doom such efforts portend. Democrats’ greatest achievement of the second Trump presidency might end up being the way they forced health care back into the political conversation. Maybe that’s the take-home lesson from the longest government shutdown in history.

Pardon?

Nick Adams, Trump’s Hooters-obsessed nominee to serve as United States ambassador to Malaysia,² posted an alarming picture of his Thanksgiving plans.

This was meant as a joke, as frying a turkey indoors—or anywhere, for that matter—is extraordinarily dangerous. Further, Adams’s kitchen is likely much larger than the one pictured, as he lives alone in a nearly 7,000-square-foot mansion in Palm Harbor, Florida.

It is a bit odd that a nominee for an important diplomatic position in the Asia-Pacific region is cracking jokes about potentially burning down his house. Could it be a metaphor of some kind? A plea for help? Please let me know in the comments if you have an esoteric Straussian reading of Adams’s tweet. Then again, sometimes a post is just a post. And posting is among the top qualifications for jobs in this administration, after all.

1. Veep is the most accurate depiction of how Washington works. For a comical but accurate depiction of the modern election circuit, check out the 2012 movie The Campaign, directed by Jay Roach.

2. Still awaiting a confirmation hearing!